Feeling the Farking Love

Man, what a day…. I go to the “Nearly a Bizness Skool” for my lab class and the door is locked and the lights are down. Which is weird, because I know I’ve seen a student duck around the corner leading to the door. As I wander back down the hallway the student yells at me to come in, and when I do the class is all gathered by the door and blowing off those champagne-popper fireworks screaming “happy birthday!” And they brought drinks and chocolate cake. Then they light aluminum-based sparklers and start singing “Happy Birthday” to me. The board has “happy birthday” written on it in Chinese, Vietnamese, and Kazakhstani. Plus, they give me gifts of a map of China, and a brief letter that says that I am their favorite instructor and the lab is their favorite class. As a bonus, the enormous clouds of smoke we generate do not trigger the smoke-alarms, although they do pull in another instructor who snaffles a piece of MY cake!

Still….

*sniffle!*

I will completely miss that class. It’s optional, with no grading and no attendance, but these 8 adorable little scholars come twice a week and we navigate the often freakish and incomprehensible waves of national culture(s). This is the class in which I can discuss the Vietnamese War with a Viet dude, Tianamenn Square with the Chinese students (and, trust me, you don’t just bring that shite up to the average Chinese student), and imperialism and the fall of the USSR with the Kazkhstani student. Great kids.

This all makes me late for the (stupid) mandatory meeting on our new computerized grading system. Which is a good thing, though it may not sound like it. I get there, grab the handout and, looking through it, note that it isn’t quite what is being shown on the screen. This observation is further strengthened when, at the end of the presentation, the Director says, “now, don’t expect this to look like what we’ve just showed you! We put this presentation together before we had the system implemented. But when you get into the system it will look like this….” At which point he waves the handout in the air.

And I wonder why we went through the whole stupid presentation. Still, I arrived late, so that’s good.

Get to my Japanese Studies class and they are docile and I have a lovely little quiz to spring on them.. keeps them quire busy for the last half hour of the class.

Then it’s off to the office and eventually my night class. While waiting for the night class I download the audiobook for “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (for the greatest Auditory Skills class there will EVER be!) and grab the last two Rolling Stones albums I haven’t looted. So, really, time well spent.


As to the class? One guy shows up on time. We sit and shoot the shit. A second guy shows up 20 minutes late and says, “Sorry, I have an appointment tonight.” The first guy looks confused, then like a light is going off in his head, and then all shifty, “Oh, I also have an appointment.”

Off they go.

The third Musketeer arrives 10 minutes later and peers suspiciously into the empty room, as though trying to calculate the odds that I have killed and eaten his friends and that he might be next. I say, “everyone left, would you like to come in and learn something?”

He looks at me for three seconds, then, “No.”

Without another word, he spins on one heel, heads to the elevator and disappears.

Bingo! Worst-Class-Evar is cancelled!

Walking home burbling happily and as I pass the bar, Betty (our nickname for the proprietress) comes bubbling out of the door hollering some uninterpretable Korean (I think that might be redundant). All that is clear is that she wants me to come inside the bar. I do, and I see another foreign instructor sitting at the table eating. Turns out that it is Betty’s daughter’s birthday and mom is celebrating at the bar by feeding us free cider and 떡-based delicacies. 떡 is a ferociously glutinized rice concoction which is made, at least partly, by beating the living shit out of an enormous patty of rice-goo. I’m not normally a fan of Ttok (the semi-Anglicization), but this isn’t that bad and at least two of the things (one of which featured raisins) are completely delicious. I sit with my compatriot and talk bad Korean with Betty (who wants to know when the OAF will be around). After I eat my fill, assure Betty that I will return with the OAF, and I leave the bar fed and even jollier.

Later, I will return and, probably, break out of November just a bit early, with a delicious beer.

Well, ok, with a CASS.. but, still, technically a beer.

I believe that even Ice Cube would concur that it was a good day.